Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

June 3, 2026

Paul Celan’s Poetic Post-Holocaust Theology

“The thousand darknesses of death-bringing speech.”

Born in the cosmopolitan city of Czernowitz (then Romania, now Ukraine), Paul Celan was fortunate enough to have been conscripted into slave labor during World War II—thus escaping murder, which was the fate of his parents and thousands of other Jews from that city. Celan settled in France after the war, where he became one of Europe’s most admired poets. Brian Patrick Eha comments on his poetry, theology, and use of language:

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